Year Six! The 2016 INSPY Awards are Now Open

Good morning, INSPY readers. The advisory board is excited to open year six of the INSPY Awards, a program for the bloggers’ “best in fiction” award is welcoming a new year and opening the nominations for 2016.

The Inspys were created to select and showcase books with the highest literary standards that grapple with the Christian faith and were designed to help readers in their search for the preeminent faith-inspired literature of today. This program is organized and judged by book bloggers who have considerable experience and knowledge of books published for both the CBA and general markets.

This year, we’ve made a significant change to our nomination process. For you, the nominator, the rules remain the same, only difference you’ll note is the lack of a publicized long list. This is because the advisory board will be collection our long list from the top 15 nominated novels in each category. So, even if you know someone else who has nominated your favorite read of 2015 or you’re certain it’s already been nominated, go ahead and add your voice because that nomination could be the 15th vote that gets the book into the top fifteen.

Once the task of the top 15 is calculated and complete, we will publicize our long list, which will be then narrowed down to five books and from there, the same judging process will apply. For more information on the changes, please refer to our announcement post.

Please note the book eligibility and the nomination rules:

The dates of eligibility have returned to a 12 month timeframe and will include books published in print between January 1, 2015 and December 31, 2015. If a print book was released as an ebook prior to 2015, it is ineligible.

Self-published books have been eliminated from consideration.

Reissues are ineligible

Books can not be self-nominated by their author.

Books may be nominated in any of the following categories:

Debut Novel

General Fiction

Contemporary Romance/Romantic Suspense

Historical Romance

Speculative Fiction

Mystery & Thriller

Literature for Young Adults

For more detailed description of categories please see the Revised Nomination Categories. If you’d like to read more about the nominating process, read our blog post with some tips on nominating the right books in their best categories. Pull out those lists and let’s begin!

The deadline to nominate a book is January 16. Winners of the sixth annual INSPY awards will be announced June 28, 2016.

Recognizing the need for a new kind of book award, the INSPYs were created by bloggers to discover and highlight the very best in literature that grapples with expressions of the Christian faith. Contact us at inspyawards@gmail.com Read More…